Monsters, Jokes, Analogies

Main Menu

Die In A Fire, Answers.com

I’m going to tell you the truth: I’ve only been to Answers.com once. I’ve clicked on their link a single time, so, in the grand scheme of things I’m left assuming that they’re either the most popular website on the planet, or want to be the most popular website on the planet and are growing through sheer use of the Facebook “Suggested/Sponsored Post” system. And I’m not going to click on them anymore than that one, unlucky time. I know it would be better for “research” if I actually knew all the specific kinds of dull, rotting content they have lurking behind their dubious headlines, but I’m not going to go any farther. They don’t deserve it.

To me, Answers.com is akin to some kind of monster from Japanese folklore, where a certain emotion grows and bubbles up in a certain area for so long that it becomes some hideous entity. In this case, those feelings are the intense hatred for the sudden revolution that the “10 to 15 entry list, written in less than a thousand words” format has had over the last few years. It’s something that exists solely for people to click on it. There is nothing gained from it, and no new insight achieved because you read “13 Films That You Thought Were Good But Were Actually Bad.”

It’s just a slurping gutter of repeated phrases meant to derive as much advertising revenue as possible because website owners have decided that the best way to get money is to just attach a number to the beginning of shit. No one wants to read your goddamn article about The Wire, Ted. But if you hastily fart together a list of “12 TV Shows That You Didn’t Watch, But Should,” you have yourself a nice $12 of freelance cash. It’s the internet equivalent of someone re-writing an encyclopedia for you, except instead of going from A to Z, they go from poorly organized “Entertainment” category to poorly organized “Tech” category.

It’s not Buzzfeed, which puts a cartoonish gif of Beyonce reacting to something at the VMA’s in place of words, but terrible content masquerading as good content which will get the same amount of clicks as the good content because the emotional reaction to seeing something that they could possibly agree with is the same for enough people. If I read “12 Superheroes That Are Totally Overused,” I might acknowledge some of them if they have enough information and reasoning to back up their points. Instead, we have a hundred thousand lists, all saying

#6 Wolverine

I mean, really. He’s been in seven movies so far and his powers haven’t changed. Time to give him a break. Really.

And that’s it. And we have people willing to accept this, and share this as if anything meaningful can be attained from it at all. I will read every Buzzfeed list on the planet as long as I don’t have to sit through another “15 Things All Doctor Who Fans Should Know” or “9 Nickelodeon Cartoons With Dirty Jokes Hidden In Them,” all published on some warped, blood drained, Cracked.com Halloween costume that 95% of the entertainment sites wear all year round.

I just picked this one yesterday, out of the multitude of ones that Facebook presented to me, like a loyal dog bringing me a dead bird with the words “13 Movies That Became Famous Years After They Were Released” written on it, as a present. I picked this one, not because it was special, because, really, they’re all alike. I don’t care what you title them. The actual information in them is so scant and worthless that you leave each owning the same flat line of knowledge that you started with. I picked this one because it, as with every other Answers.com link, is a perfect example that could stand for every other link. It’s just barely gasping nothingness.

We’ll start off with the aforementioned “Suggested Post,” and I don’t know what I did to Facebook to make it think that this was a good suggestion for me. I will gladly take back the thing I shared that told their internal system that I needed sixty Answers.com Suggested Posts a day. I will do whatever I can to reverse whatever wrathful state I put Facebook in to keep me forever un-updated on the goings on at the Answers.com office cave.

Since there still isn’t a possible reason for Answers to exist, “Answers Pop” actually intrudes upon the collective happiness of the planet. It was someone’s ill intentions that brought it into being. They might as well just call it “Extra Money For Us” or “Press Here To Hate You.”

“A Jim Carrey classic for the ages!”

It smiles and agrees with you, like something that cares for your emotions, or your personal level of acceptance for passable writing. It’s processed enthusiasm that, like it does with content, parodies actual enthusiasm. Neither of the Ace Ventura films come anywhere close to the words “classic” or “ages.” Funny movies? Maybe. But Answers.com bathes every single subject it covers in this weird, sick glow of admiration, or, if it’s a negative article, this all-consuming disgust. Every opinion is screamed so loudly by it that no opinion actually gets across. It’s a robot body snatcher’s idea of sentiment.

I don’t know where you have to be in your life to want to write this cystic waste from the asshole of Jim Carrey’s IMDb page. And I also don’t know where you have to be in your life to think that this is, in any way, an appropriate thing to give your attention to. I’m going to play your terrible father for a second, and say “Just go outside, son.” People with an intense interest in Ace Ventura probably know all of these things already, so it can’t be them taking a refresher course in the finer art of “Alriiiggghty then.” There’s a level of boredom that it has to appeal to, where you need just the tiniest spark of recognition to fall into a rabbit hole of regurgitated internet.

I’m sure that good things have happened to you before. And I’m sure that these good things are like tiny fireflies in the space your memory: the warm embrace of a loved one, maybe a birthday or something. But it’s assured that, if you’re clicking on this, which is the dying grasp of 90’s nostalgia, reaching and pleading for you to take its hand and walk it back from the light, no good things are happening right now. There are a few rock bottoms that people can hit, and sitting and thinking to yourself that you want to donate a chunk of your earthy existence on “9 Things You Never Knew About ‘Ace Ventura: Pet Detective” is one of them. As mortal, fleshy humans, we die far too fast to spend our time on this.